Scott Allsop's Blog, page 69

9th June 1815: ‘Final Act’ of the Congress of Vienna signed, nine days before Napoleon’s final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo

The Final Act of the Congress set in place a map of Europe that remained largely unchanged for the next forty years, and which laid the foundations for the First World ...

8th June 1972: Nick Ut takes his harrowing photo of Vietnamese girl, Phan Thị Kim Phúc, running from napalm

On the 8th June 1972 one of the most iconic photographs of the Vietnam War was taken of Phan Thị Kim Phúc, a nine-year-old girl from the South Vietnamese village of Trang ...

7th June 1520: Henry VIII and Francis I meet at the Field of Cloth of Gold

In 1518 the English Cardinal Wolsey had negotiated the Treaty of London, a non-aggression pact that was signed by the twenty major European powers of the ...

6th June 1944: D-Day landings launched by the Allied forces of the Second World War in Normandy

The amphibious landings in Normandy are still the largest seaborne invasion ever to be staged, and marked the start of the Allied invasion of Nazi-held Western ...

5th June 1883: First Orient Express train departs Paris

The first Orient Express train, known at the time as Express d'Orient, departed ...

4th June 1913: Suffragette Emily Wilding Davison knocked down by a racehorse at the Epsom Derby after she stepped onto the track

The majority of commentators hold the view that Davison did not intend to martyr herself, but rather wished to attach a ‘Votes For Women’ scarf to the horse as a way to gain publicity for the ...

3rd June 1989: Tiananmen Square protesters fired on by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army

Official figures reported 241 deaths as a result of the crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests but unofficial estimates, including one by the US Ambassador at the time, place the figure at more than twice ...

2nd June 1962: Chile and Italy meet in the World Cup’s violent ‘Battle of Santiago’

Chile and Italy met in the 1962 FIFA World Cup, which resulted in ‘the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football possibly in the history of the ...

1st June 1495: First written reference to Scotch whisky (distilled at @LindoresAbbey)

The royal Exchequer Rolls from Scotland recorded the first known written reference to Scotch ...

31st May 1669: Samuel Pepys writes the final entry of his famous diary that records the period of the Restoration

Pepys had begun writing his diary in January 1660. Since being published in 1825 it has become an important source for historians studying the period of the Restoration. He stopped writing due to a fear that constant writing by candlelight was damaging his ...